


love like fools

by lullabyforstrings



Series: to build a home [2]
Category: Pitch (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Family, Gen, Human Disaster Mike Lawson, OFC - Freeform, OMC - Freeform, Retired Mike Lawson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lullabyforstrings/pseuds/lullabyforstrings
Summary: "Somehow the Mets had a dildo in one of their lockers yet you’re still trending on Twitter,” Evelyn says as she shuts her laptop.“Great,” Ginny mumbles as the bartender does a doubletake at his boss when he picks up on that last sentence. She hasn’t been in a restaurant in such a long time that the emptiness of the place before opening feels more welcoming than anything has in a long time.“The San Diego media isn’t the same as the New York media. It’ll blow over soon enough,” she says as she pulls out her phone. “Any run ins with Mike?”





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to "to build a home." It'snot completely necessary to read that fic before reading this one, but this one would make a lot more sense if you did. 
> 
> This story takes place in February 2017 a week before pitchers and catchers report. Mike would have turned 37 and his daughter is now 17. I'm planning on following what would have been the 2017 season. Each chapter would be a snapshot of a month or so. 
> 
> Since Fox never gave us a second season, if anyone has any suggestions as to what you'd like me to explore (Oscar's mess of a dating life, Livan's childhood?) just drop a comment.

Lawson Doesn't Have Answers  
San Diego Times  
February 3rd, 2017

SAN DIEGO, California—San Diego Padres’ Mike Lawson turns 38 in November, but if age is something on his mind, he doesn’t sound like it.

“I still enjoy playing baseball,” Lawson said when asked if retirement is on the table for him after a devastating knee injury that had him carted off the field in September. “This is what I have wanted to do since I was a kid. This is worth it. Even with going through physical therapy and having a reduced training schedule over the years, I’m not letting myself stand in the way of starting for the Padres again. I’m the captain.”

As the face of the Padres through painful first round exits, failure after failure to qualify for the playoffs, Lawson’s tenure in San Diego has not been devoid of controversy.

While mulling over retirement must have been in the back of Lawson’s mind throughout the past decade--a decade that saw him in and out of games with a reoccurring knee and back issues and multiple concussions--the Padres’ management needs to find out what to do with Lawson and Cuban catcher Livan Duarte. 

While the question becomes when—not if—Lawson’s knees will force him into retirement, he remains hopeful. 

“I feel good, I’m getting better and better every day,” Lawson said.

 

//

 

Mike plans on waiting out the chase of the headache pounding in his left temple with black coffee.

He trades in his glass case for a three bedroom condo a few blocks away from the stadium. By some stretch of a miracle, his real estate agent finds a buyer. In the new place, his bedroom overlooks the stadium, but it doesn’t look the same anymore. Retirement hasn’t called his name, but it’s knocking. He’s still on the active roster, but those are conversations that need to be had. 

With a sigh, he finishes his coffee and pads over to his daughter’s room. 

“You up?”

Peyton’s hair is pulled into a bun, but she’s still in her pajamas as she flips through her phone. 

“Mhm,” she says, only looking up at him for a split-second.

“You know,” he says as he runs a hand over his beard. “This could be really helpful.”

Confidence isn’t something most Padres fans think he lacks, but he’s finding it hard to conceal the worry on his face. 

Peyton lets out a breath before she purses her lips. It’s not a coincidence that the day her dad decides it’s time to see a family therapist that Rachel comes in the picture.

“What do you think?” Peyton asks. 

She doesn’t want to go, but she also knows that her dad isn’t going to see a therapist himself unless he thinks it’s for her sake.

“It’s up…” he starts, but stops before letting out a sigh. “Peyton, everyone thinks we should go…even Al.”

“Then let’s go.”

 

//

 

The therapist doesn’t ask the questions he’s expecting them to. Peyton’s mother is never brought up, his divorce is never mentioned, and his knee brace is never even glanced at. They talk. They just…have a conversation for two hours.

The guy—who barely looks older than Mike himself--engages with Peyton like they’re old friends while Mike feels like the third wheel he is when the Sanders used to invite him over for dinner. 

“With your father’s career, do you ever wish he had a normal job?”

Mike crosses his arms as he glares at the guy. He hates how pretentious they make the guy look. He looks like he’s from San Francisco. “She doesn’t have to answer that.” 

“Mike, do you ever wish you had a normal job?”

Peyton frowns. What kind of question is that? 

“I thought the questions were mostly for my daughter?”

“They are,” he says as he pushes his glasses further up. “This is.”

He ignores the back pain and hunger sitting in, because even though he pushed a fruit smoothie in Peyton’s hands before they left, he’s running on caffeine and a protein bar.

“This is all he’s ever wanted to do…and ever done so,” she says as he shrugs. 

Mike glances at the clock. “Peyton has tutoring in an hour and traffic’s bad so we should probably be heading out.”

Peyton seems to tense, but gives a soft smile and a curt nod at the therapist.

“Of course, will I see you next week?”

“Sure,” Peyton answers for him.

“Mr. Lawson, may I speak with you for a moment? Just have a few papers to sign.” He knows what she’s doing, but if he tries to get away with pretending otherwise he risks Peyton figuring it out.

“Yeah, uh, sure,” he stammers before turning to the kid. “Peyton, I’ll just be a minute.”

“So what did you want to say to me? That Peyton should have a better guardian? Maybe not someone with 65 year old knees and an article about how many women he’s dated? ”

“Mr. Lawson…when you made this appointment, I didn’t think you’d show. Most parents just drop their children off. But you came—early, too--and didn’t take the out until 2 hours.”

Mike crosses his arms. “Peyton does have tutoring today.”

“That’s not what I was saying.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“That’s not what a bad parent does, does he? Take his daughter to an appointment like this?”

“You’re the only person who seems to think I don’t fit in that category.”

 

//

 

“What advice can that guy give you about life? He’s like, fresh out of college,” Mike grumbles as he turns onto the highway.

Peyton puts her sunglasses on top of her head. “Pretty sure he’s your age.”

Mike scoffs. “No, he’s not. He’s like…twenty-five years old.”

Peyton rolls her eyes. She wonders if everyone over the age of twenty-five just assumes someone younger than them is fresh out of college.

“His degree says he graduated from Stanford as an undergrad in 2002.”

She watches her dad’s eyebrows furrow. “Fuck, he looks young.”

She shrugs. “Maybe you just look old.”

“Yeah, because I’ve actually had real life experiences unlike that hipster.”

“Dad, you played in the MLB for all your life. I’d barely call that real life,” Peyton retorts, but immediately regrets it.

Mike can’t help but pick up on the past tense. 

“Shit, I’m sorry that was a stupid thing to say,” she stammers out. A deadbeat dad and a conwoman for a mother doesn’t spell sheltered in any way.

“You’re not wrong,” Mike says, a little too harsher than she intended for it to come off. 

 

//

 

“Did you just buy the cheapest wine you could find?”

“Can’t taste it if you’re too drunk to focus on the taste. Besides, you just moved into your new apartment,” Cara says with a laugh. Her hair is curlier than when they first met. She had been wake boarding before they met up. “So is he retiring?” 

“Who?” Ginny asks even though she knows who. 

“Your captain. Wasn’t he carted off at the end of the last season?”

“Y-yeah, uh, he was,” Ginny stammers as she hoists the grocery bag higher on her hip. She can’t remember the last time she went grocery shopping. 

“He gonna come back?” Cara asks. She doesn’t look at Ginny as the garage elevator opens.

“That’s the plan,” Ginny says. “Hasn’t said anything otherwise.”

“So do you get to see the junk?” 

Ginny almost drops her bag. “What?”

If she had a dollar for each time someone asked her that, she would be making more than Blip and Sonny combined, but the question catches her off guard.

Cara laughs. “You heard what I said…do they like, put you in a different locker room?”

“They do, but it’s not like…”

She’s cut off when the elevator opens on the lobby floor.

“I doubt he was even from San Francisco—oh, Ginny.” 

Her eyes dart up to see her captain and his daughter. 

“Oh, h-hey,” Mike says. The words sound terse. He’s barely even looking at her when he says them.

“W-what are you doing here?” 

“What are you doing here?” Mike asks. He reaches out to punch their floor key, but freezes when he sees it’s already been punched. Fuck.

“She just moved in two days ago,” Cara says, almost sounding smug.

Of course you do, he thinks. 

“Cool, which apartment?” Peyton chirps. 

Kill me.

“315.”

“You’re right across the hall from us.”

Mike doesn’t even bother to let Ginny off first when the elevator opens. 

“You’re welcome to join us for the housewarming party,” Cara says, but Mike’s already halfway down the hall.

“Thanks, but Peyton has a project to finish up. Her classmate’s coming over,” Mike says as he fishes around in his pocket for his keys.

 

//

 

“You coming down to San Diego this weekend?” 

“Can’t. Got clearance for the piece on JJ Watt,” Rachel says. Her voice is going in and out so Mike assumes she’s driving. 

Mike doesn’t try to disguise his sigh as he leans back against the headboard of his bed.“Want me and Peyton to come up to LA? I have a rehab appointment on Saturday, but we could get brunch before you ship out—”

“Maybe not week. I can come down Thursday night for the weekend.”

He rubs his finger around the rim of his water bottle.

“I’m heading to an appointment, but I’ll text you tomorrow,” he says as he stands up. He tries to ignore the pain in his knees as he gets out of bed.

“Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He pads down the hallway to the kitchen.

It’s past nine so he figures he knows Peyton will be up. With her spring break approaching, she’s been up scrambling to cram. Despite what she says, he knows she’s been falling asleep after eleven most nights, especially on the weekend. Even if she’s opened up to him in the past few months, the sounds of footsteps pattering down the hallway to the kitchen at one in the morning tell him she’s not getting the right amount of sleep a teenager should be getting.

“Hey, Peyton. It’s past nine. Jackson should be heading back to his floor,” he begins as he knocks on his daughter’s bedroom door. “Did you two actually get any work done or did you spend the past hour playing FIFA?”

“Just a second!” Peyton replies. 

“Didn’t I tell you not to lock your door when you have boys over?”

“Yeah, you did,” Peyton says as she whips the door open. “Calm down. Jackson left while you were on the phone with Rachel.”

He would have believed it if the boy didn’t wander out of her bathroom with only a towel on. 

“Hey, Peyton. Is…how fucked am if I accidently confused this sugar foot scrub of yours for shower soap?” Jackson asks with a worried expression on his face as he glares at the label on the foot scrub.

 

//

 

“So you two are dating.”

"No." "Yes."

Mike watches as Jackson’s eyes bulge as Peyton’s glares at him.

"Which is it?" Mike barks out.

"Kind of?” Jackson stammers out. He’s managed to remember how to put pants on, but doesn’t have the peace of mind to find his sweatshirt. 

"Well, we haven’t made it Facebook official yet…”

Mike rolls his eyes as he tries to hold in a sigh. This is what his life is like now. It’s just great. It’s fucking great. He deserves this. 

"You know what 'sort of dating' means, Mr. Addison?"

The boy’s eyes dart to the floor.

"It means on and off, casual, no commitment, friends-with-benefits kind of dating, the sort of dating that my kid is sure as hell going to get hurt in so I'm gonna ask you again…are the two of you dating?"

“Yes, sir.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Three months.” “Two weeks.”

Peyton sighs as she crosses her arms. She has her sweatpants on from her old high school back in Chicago. They’re ratty and a size too large, but she wears them more often than she did when she first got to San Diego. 

“At least have the decency to get your stories fucking straight if you’re going to lie to me like that.”

“Mike…”

“Sir.”

“S-sir, we were gonna tell you,” Jackson stammers out. 

“Dad, I…” Peyton starts. 

Even though she’s lived with her father for half a year, the notion of names never struck her until recently. Early on in their relationship, she avoided calling him anything, let alone “dad”. When he called her by her name, it felt too foreign. When he called her “Pey,” it felt too personal. When he called her “kiddo” it felt ever worse.

“Peyton, stop,” he says through gritted teeth. “Just…wait, you’re wearing Jackson’s shirt, aren’t you?”

Jackson grabs his phone and keys from the coffee table in front of him. “It might be a good idea for me to head home. It’s late and I, uh, have practice tomorrow.”

“Smartest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Mike says as he crosses his arms. Peyton doesn’t even look at him as he heads out the door.

“I was gonna tell you…eventually.”

“Why wouldn’t you tell me you were dating that kid?” He asks as he sits down. 

“Because you just looked like you were five seconds away from murdering him,” she says as she crosses her arms.

“I need a drink,” he says. He rubs his face; his eyes feel dry as it is and now he has a headache to deal with.

“I thought you were on your pain meds still?”

He doesn’t even try to hide the groan he lets out as his knees protest. “I walked in on my daughter on our teenage neighbor’s lap, this situation warrants alcohol.”

“Why do you have a problem with me dating him? You love Jackson. You hang out with his dad, you’ve invited him over to watch the Chargers each weekend. He respects you. Why else would you willingly watch the Chargers?”

That’s what his weekends consist of now. Hoping his ex-wife comes over and if not, hanging out with his daughter and their neighbor’s teenage son. He doesn’t know if that is more pathetic than the state of his knees right now.

“I have every single problem when you date someone like him, have him over unsupervised, and walk in on him as he tries to defile my daughter.”

Peyton snorts. “Did you just use the word defile?”

“I’m not playing around, Peyton. What if he took advantage of you? Do you even know where to get condoms?”

“Can we not have this talk at 11 PM?”

Can we not have this discussion sober, Mike wants to say, but holds his tongue.

“Fine,” Mike relents. “You should sleep before your old man has a heart attack.”

“You are not having a heart attack,” Peyton says before glancing down at his slightly more pronounced stomach. “It's probably indigestion… did you have pizza again for dinner?”

Mike rolls his eyes as he shoves his hands in his jean pockets. “Go to sleep.”

“You do realize that Jackson is my only actual friend right now, right? Because of you. Do you realize how hard it is to make friends when your dad plays for the Padres?”

Their eyes meet, and it makes her heart stop for a second, like Peyton is recognizing this man she’s supposed to share half her blood for the first time, and suddenly seeing that small part of herself that is half Mike’s. It's a glimmer—the same look of determination—and maybe she's imagining it, but it's there, for sure. 

“Just don’t let yourself get hurt, okay?”

Peyton nods as she bites down on her lip. “I won’t.”

 

//

 

“How long did you know, Baker?”

After two beers and a call to a locksmith, he makes his way across the hall. It’s not his best decision, but it’s not his worst.

“What?” Ginny rasps out. 

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know—it’s not like she told Rachel. She tells you everything. She’s texting you all the time!”

Ginny scoffs under her breath. “Peyton texts me maybe once a week, Mike.”

Mike fights the urge to roll his eyes. He sees his daughter’s phone bill and knows it’s much more than that.

“How long have you known that she had a boyfriend?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I…” he starts, but shakes his head. This is ridiculous, he shouldn’t be here.

“So how’d you find out?”

“Walked in on them.”

“Having sex?”

“No! God, no. Don’t even mention that word in the same sentence as my daughter.”

“Who’s the boy?” Ginny asks as she leans back and crosses her arms.

“He lives in the apartment above us. His dad’s a single dad, his parents are divorced.”

“And he’s her age?”

“Yeah, he was born in 2000,” Mike says. “He used to play junior hockey in Michigan before he snapped his ankle. He was projected to be a pretty high draft pick. Year out from his draft date when he got injured.”

Ginny rubs a hand on her face. “Poor kid.”

“I don’t mind the kid…”

“But you mind him dating Peyton.” Ginny snorts before she can cover up her laugh with a cough.

“It sure as hell wasn’t funny to me, Baker.”

“You didn’t think your daughter--who’s turning seventeen years old in two months--isn’t having sex?”

“Okay, yeah, I shouldn’t have come…” Mike says as he turns on his heel. “Have a good night, Baker.”

He doesn’t want to think about how this is the first conversation they have had since September.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Have you talked to her yet?” Al asks once the laughs putter out, figuring they need a change of subject. Mike’s got his gaze fixed on the bottom of his beer so he doesn’t see Al gesture toward Ginny.
> 
> “About sex?” Mike asks as he gets up to grab another beer. If he’s going to have this conversation, he needs more beer to do it. 
> 
> Al frowns. “With Baker?”
> 
> Mike almost drops his beer. His eyes dart around to locate Ginny and his teammates who are mostly hauled outside, watching the grill. “Wait, what?”
> 
> “I asked you if you had talked to Baker lately.”
> 
> Mike feels his face go pale. “Oh.”
> 
> “Why? D’you think I was asking about you giving Peyton The Talk?”

Padres' Livan Duarte Won't Report to Spring Training  
San Diego Times Febuary 11th, 2017 

SAN DIEGO, California--While the Padres have made some good adjustments this offseason, the team is at a crossroads. After a decade of squandered chances, fans are wondering if new ownership is going to rebuild. While the pitching staff has garnered attention in the past season, they lack depth with an aging core. Cuban catcher Livan Duarte could inject some youth into the team, but reports out of Los Angeles leave the Padres brass wondering how committed to training he is. Couple that with playing in the NL West – a division that featured three playoff teams last season – and the Padres’ 2018 playoff hopes are fading before the season starting.

 

//

 

“How was your week?” Mike asks Rachel as he sits down. They're at the sushi place they went to for their first Valentine's Day. There's no sentimentality. The lighting of the place is already making his head throb and he’s been there for all of two minutes.

“Good, good.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it down to San Diego last week,” Rachel says as she slinks her arms around Mike. He’s definitely softer than he was before the injury, but still strong. “Have you murdered Peyton’s boyfriend yet?”

“Not yet,” he says as he flicks open the drink menu.

“Who is it again?”

“Addison’s boy.”

“As in Jonathan Addison from the Anaheim Ducks?”

“Yeah,” Mike replies. “Remember I told you he moved into the apartment above us? His son’s named Jackson. He goes to school with Peyton.”

“Jackson Addison?”

Mike scoffs as he raises his eyebrows. “I know.”

“Didn’t he play junior hockey?”

“Went high in the junior drafts,” Mike says as he starts scanning the restaurant for a waiter.

“And you didn’t assume those two were dating?”

“Peyton thinks he’s an idiot…well,” he says with a shrug. “She thought he was an idiot, I guess.”

“Peyton’s smart.”

“It’s not her that I’m worried about,” he says as he pries open an edamame.

She slapped at his chest with the drink menu. "Mike, she’ll be fine. She needs room to grow, you can’t hover like this. Why do you think I told her she should wait until she thought it was serious, but she—"

"You knew before me?" 

She paused, turning her eyes away, mouth agape. "I…" She sighed. "I… might've walked in on them while they were… spending time alone.”

Mike turned to face her, his eyes wide and searching hers. "Did you walk in on them having sex?”

"I-I…they weren’t exactly having sex.”

"Were they wearing clothing?"

“Mike…”

“Are you two ready to order?” The waiter asks. Mike doesn’t know whether to be thankful or to curse the college student out.

“Yeah, I’ll have a scotch.”

“I’m sorry, but we only have Japanese imports, sir.”

“Then whatever’s the strongest drink you have.”

 

//

 

“Why are you sitting on the floor?”

“Oh, I’m just waiting for my dad. I came back from a friend’s, but my dad’s having dinner with Rachel and I lost my key.”

“Did you come back early?”

Peyton nods. “Was working on an essay. I don’t know why every Starbucks around here closes early so I’ve been chilling here.”

“Come on in, if you want,”

Mike should be back soon, but she still goes in. 

“How’s school going?” Ginny asks as she hands Peyton a water bottle. 

Peyton shrugs. “Good.”

I’m failing chemistry, literature, and gym, she wants to say, but instead she picks at the pillows on the couch.

Ginny raises her eyebrow at her. “So the kids are that bad?”

“They’re all assholes,” she says with a shrug. “I never want to see any more Anthropologie clothes in my life after this.”

The apartment looks pre-furnished—whether that is by a designer or the Design House of Evelyn Sanders, she doesn’t know. It doesn’t feel like what Ginny Baker’s place would look like, it looks more like hotel furnishing.

“How’s your dad?” 

The question snaps her out of her trance.

“Not the best.”

She doesn’t why she strays away from the company line, but the words spring off her tongue.

“That bad?”

“He’s probably done,” she says as she fiddles with the pillow’s tassel. “Doesn’t think he is, but I don’t know what to tell him.”

She doesn’t want her dad to not be able to walk without pain by the time he’s fifty years old.

Her phone interupts her thoughts when the Peanuts' parents blares across Ginny's apartment. She had assigned the ringtone to Mike's number as a joke. 

“Hey...” 

“--Where the hell are you?”

“I’m in the room next door.”

“With who?” she can hear Mike practically shout from the phone.

“I’ll be out in a second.” 

Peyton stumbles off the couch and over to the door. 

“Who are you with?” 

“Ginny,” she says with all the casual nature a seventeen year old can muster. 

“Who?”

Either Mike’s had too much to drink or has developed a hearing problem. 

“Ginny. Ginny Baker? First female athlete to play in men’s professional league. You know…your teammate?” Peyton says as she pokes her head out the door. 

Ginny tilts her head up at her captain. “Hey.”

“O-oh, Baker,” Mike stammers, phone still pressed to his ear. 

“Sorry, I was gonna text you where I was but my phone died.”

“Can you not scare me like this? I’m too old for this,” he says as he hugs her before looking at Ginny. He nods in her direction before mumbling a quiet “thanks.”

Ginny crosses her arms as she chews on the side of her cheek. “You should probably get your essay done, Peyton.”

“What essay? You said you finished all your homework over the weekend.”

“Forgot about it,” she says as she shrugs. 

Mike runs a hand through his hair. It’s only for a split second, but it strikes Ginny how old he looks.

“Head to bed. I’ll wake you up in the morning so you can finish your homework before we go to Al’s. I don’t want you to pull an all-nighter.”

 

//

 

“Are you teaching my boys how to play poker?” Blip asks.

“No, of course not,” Peyton says as she glances at the twins. “I’m teaching them a watered-down version.”

“Peyton, they’re eight.”

“And a half,” Peyton says as she rolls her eyes. 

 

//

 

Al raises his eyebrows. “Wait, we was showering in her room?” 

Mike grunts in reply as Al laughs.

“Have you talked to her yet?” Al asks once the laughs putter out, figuring they need a change of subject. Mike’s got his gaze fixed on the bottom of his beer so he doesn’t see Al gesture toward Ginny.

“About sex?” Mike asks as he gets up to grab another beer. If he’s going to have this conversation, he needs more beer to do it. 

Al frowns. “With Baker?”

Mike almost drops his beer. His eyes dart around to locate Ginny and his teammates who are mostly hauled outside, watching the grill. “Wait, what?”

“I asked you if you had talked to Baker lately.”

Mike feels his face go pale. “Oh.”

“Why? D’you think I was asking about you giving Peyton The Talk?”

Mike can feel his blood pressure spike. “Neither are things I want to think about, Al.”

Especially the first, he thinks.

“Don’t like the boy?”

“He lives in our building. I’m friends with his dad. He goes to school with Peyton so he has have been over a few times,” Mike says. “Just don’t like him dating Peyton.”

“You seen Livan lately?” Sonny asks as he plops down on the couch. Part of Mike has to fight to keep in his sigh of relief. Thank god that conversation was over.

“Ask Page Six,” Blip says as he rolls his eyes. “He can’t go out every night like that.”

Mike shrugs. “86 Mets did it.”

Sonny frowns. “So did you in your rookie year, Mike.”

“Well, the 86 Mets didn’t have Twitter to capture it.”

“He’s showing up at practice.”

“How functional is he?” Blip asks as he sits down on the couch with a plate of steak kabobs.

“From what I heard from my buddy in LA, he’s running on 80%,” Al says. 

“If he gave 5% more he’d be on a path to Cooperstown, mark my words.”

Sonny raises his eyebrows. “You think he’s going to listen to me?”

Mike scoffs. “You think he’s going to listen to me?”

“You still have a voice in this room, Mike,” Blip says, words long and drawn out like he’s tired of having to convince himself of it, tired of having to tell the media it. They’ve all been running with the lie for weeks—he’s expected back at the end of the All-Star break, give or take a few. 

The truth was, spring training was just a formality. Show up for the press, do what he could to give off the impression that a comeback was possible…that he wanted to come back in the first place. 

He told himself he was fine with that. Half of his career has been ac act in itself. He told himself that he didn’t care either, but he hated how much he was lying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your lovely comments and kudos!
> 
> Next chapter has Ginny and Livan accidentally sharing a hotel room during their first road trip of the season.


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ginny and Livan have to share a hotel room.

@katienolan (04/11/2017): If you traveled back in time to the future and someone told you that in 2016, the Padres would have a future hall of fame catcher, a female pitcher, and Donald Trump was president, would that person think you're on drugs? 

 

//

 

“So how was your offseason, Mami?”

“Can you not call me that?” Ginny asks. The hotel lighting already makes her head pound, her catcher’s voice isn’t doing anything to help that. 

“Never had a problem with it until now. Is that billionaire you’re dating jealous?” Livan asks as he hoists his duffel bag on his shoulder.

“That’s not my point,” she says, voice stronger than the pounding in her head. “You can’t call me that in public. Sends the wrong message.”

“Relax, Mami. I’m not hitting on you.”

That doesn’t matter, she wants to scream. None of that has ever mattered.

“The concierge doesn’t know that.”

He either knows how his words sounded or he doesn’t care. Ginny knows that the Cuban catcher is not an idiot. He can see things, but most of the time he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have to care. He has the talent to silence his critics even if they tend to scream louder as of late, but he doesn’t live in the fishbowl she does. 

She punches the tenth floor button with more force than she should.

“Does it matter what she thinks?”

“You know the answer to that,” she says as she steps out of the elevator.

“People say things about me all the time. I don’t care,” he says as she continues to stare a hole in the elevator floor. “Baker, there’s going to be a rumour that you’re dating one of us eventually. Twitter already thinks you’re having an affair with Sanders.”

Better they think she’s having an affair with Blip than Mike, she thinks.

“You know that’s not true,” she says as she pulls her keycard out of her pocket.

“I know,” he says as his brow furrows into a frown. “What are you doing? This is my room.”

“What are you talking about? The concierge gave me this room,” she said as she grabbed his keycard. Same code, same number.

“Then I guess we’re roommates for tonight. Mami.”

 

//

 

“I’ll fall," Peyton says as she glances down at the ice.

“You won’t.”

“I didn’t grow up playing hockey like you did. We didn’t have textbooks that weren’t falling apart let alone insurance to cover ice rinks.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I’ll fall and crack my head open,” Peyton says as she puts on shaky foot on the ice.

Jackson plops the goalie mask on her. “Better?”

“I look like a Power Ranger,” she says as she tries not to gag from the smell. How do people focus in this? “Where’d you even get this? You were a defenseman, not a goalie.”

Her tongue hitches on the past tense of the sentence. The scars on his left ankle are enough to tell the story. She didn’t need to look up the video of his injury in World Juniors to know his career was over once his ankle bent like that against the boards.

Jackson doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t know if he didn’t pick up on her words or if he’s shoving them away. “My buddy had a practice here an hour ago. Usually leaves it in his locker and never locks it,” he says as he shrugs. 

Peyton rolls her eyes. Suburbanites.

“You look cute when you're frustrated.”

She smirks. “Remind me why I’m dating you?”

Jackson just laughs as he leans against the boards. 

 

//

 

“You’re thinking too much.”

“You’ve been thinking too little if this offseason has taught us anything,” she says as she unzips her duffle. “I’m not the one who just spent the offseason on Page Six.”

“Whatever I did in the offseason isn’t any of your business.”

“Just like your dating life is mine?”

“You know what I’m talking about. It’s not a coincidence that the athletes who get shit for “enjoying themselves too much” are brown?”

“I don’t think you need to lecture me on that.”

Livan smirks. “New Balance sneakers? Really? The night of your Nike party?”

Ginny crosses her arms. “Hypocrite or not, Mike has a point.”

“I don’t think Lawson has a right to lecture me given what he’s done off the field in his career,” Livan says as he begins to unpack his suitcase. His movements are strong but languid, almost like he’s setting up to go at bat.

“Where was the media when Lawson was sleeping with everyone in San Diego after his divorce? No one says anything about Bryant when he shows up too hungover to play or when Matt Harvey misses practice for the same reason,” He says as he plops a stack of pants into the hotel’s drawer. 

“That’s different…”

Livan shakes his head. He pulls out a pair of sweats from his suitcase, only for a pink thong to fall out. “Is it?”

Ginny blinks. “Is it?”

 

//

 

“The least you can do is buy me hot chocolate after that,” Peyton jokes as she pulls her skate off. Knotting those skates wasn’t the best thing to do if she considered long-term planning, if the last ten minutes it took her to undo the knot were any indication.

“We can get ice cream on the way home,” he says as he sits down, not without some discomfort, to take off her second skate. He’s freshly showered with a towel still hanging around his neck.

“Now you’re talking.”

“If your dad is at dinner with Rachel later, want to head over to my buddy’s house? He doesn’t live too far from here, and he’s having a few of my teammates over.”

Peyton bites down on her lip. She’s not dressed for a party, but she also knows that Jackson hasn’t seen any of his teammates since he got injured a year ago.

She shrugs. “Yeah, sure.”

His former teammates don’t come down to San Diego as often as they should, even if Jackson doesn’t admit he misses them. Maybe he misses the sport, not the boys he grew up with.

 

//

 

The game ends with the box score blaring an ugly eleven to one. She’s barely out of the second inning when she gets pulled.

After two hours of staking out the press, only to find them waiting outside the clubhouse, Ginny tumbles into her bed. Livan is nowhere to be found even though he didn’t start. The Padres’ travel team might have finally sorted him into a separate room, but there’s an equal chance he’s probably out.

Ginny: Hey just got in. can you get rid of the thong? are you using it as like…a hipster decoration or something?

Livan: Im starting a collection

Ginny: Arent you dating someone?

Livan: Not anymore

Ginny: Shit. Sorry

Livan: Its ok.. you didn’t know

 

//

 

“How bored are you that we’re watching a fucking Padres game?” The guy—Peyton thinks his name is Chad—asks Jackson as he flips to the game.

“They’re playing against deGrom and the Mets,” Jackson says as he flicks the remote onto the coffee table. The plastic rings off the finer glass, but for a boy whose parents make enough to put him in a sport that costs five figures to play every year, potentially breaking a thousand dollar coffee table doesn’t worry him, Peyton figures.

“Oh, a shitty managed team against another shitty managed team,” the other guy says. He’s lanky—almost too lanky to be playing the level of Junior Hockey Jackson was playing—so she assumes he’s Jackson’s former goaltender. He’s said all of five words in the last hour, preferring to sit back and play FIFA on the TV on the other side of the room.

“Who would win in a pitching duel? Matt Harvey with a UCL tear or Baker?” Connor jokes. 

She watches as Jackson rolls his eyes. He plops down on the couch next to her, but she can tell that he’s pissed off. His cheeks are flushed.

“She’s a gimmick,” Chad says through a laugh.

“Connor…” She hears Jackson warn.

“Just because she has a vagina, she’s a gimmick?”

“Yeah,” he says as he leans forward. “Padres can’t give away tickets and have no shot at making the playoffs. She puts butts in the seats.”

Peyton smirks. “Well, she’s a gimmick that has a better career win percentage than Matt Harvey right now.”

“Yeah, my grandmother could have better stats than Matt Harvey right now. He’s blown out his arms twice and sucks ass,” he says as he takes a swig of his beer. “Have you watched any baseball recently?”

She smirks at the accusation because he’s either got his head far enough up his ass to say that when her father is the captain of the Padres or Jackson hasn’t told him who her dad is.

“I’m just saying that…”

“I know what you’re gonna say,” Connor says as he leans forward. 

“I know that…”

“I know what you’re gonna say,” 

“Are you sure? Since you needed a hockey scholarship to barely get into UND.”

Chad—she thinks that’s his name—almost spits out his beer as he tried to stifle a laugh.

Jackson wastes no time in changing the subject. She can feel his grip around her waist tighten. She doesn’t know if that’s from his anxiety or anger, but her blood pressure isn’t any better.

“Alright, boys. We’re gonna ship out,” Jackson says as he stands up.

 

//

 

“You know the only reason I signed here was that Arguella agreed not to let me sit behind Lawson?” Livan asks as he tosses a knit ball up in the air. The motion is methodical, which describes absolutely nothing in her life as of late. Even the sound of the sack hitting Livan’s hand stresses her out. 

“Was that not always the plan? I thought you were a depth signing.”

“And you thought Mike wasn’t going to okay a trade with the Cubs?”

“He okayed the trade to the Cubs to win a World Series…his daughter is from there, too.”

Livan scoffs.“You don’t think me taking his job was the main reason?”

“I think he cares about what his daughter wants.”

“Seriously? You think that? I don’t think he gives a shit about his kid.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then why do we never see her around the ballpark?”

“He probably doesn’t want her photographed.”

 

//

 

“Hey,” Mike says as his daughter shuffles into the kitchen. She plops her backpack down with a little more force than he’s used to seeing.

“Hey,” she mumbles as she shoves her hands in her pockets. “How was your dinner?”

“Fine,” he mumbles. “We went to some…French place? I think? Hell if I know. All those four star restaurants Rachel uses for networking serve bird food portions of food. You want a quesadilla?”

Peyton shrugs. “Sure.”

“Do you feel ready for your test?” Mike asks as he flips the quesadilla over with his fingers

She shrugs. “I guess.”

Mike switches the pan off. “So were you studying in a brewery?”

Peyton’s eyes widen before she lets out a sigh. “Okay, I went skating with Jackson and then we went to his friend’s house. They were drinking, but I wasn’t drinking. Neither was he”

“Peyton, contrary to popular belief, I’m not an idiot. You can’t lie to me like that.”

“I’m not lying. I told you, I didn’t drink,” she says as she fiddles with her sleeve. 

“Look, I don’t want to argue about this, but you lied about where you were going.”

“You said I could date Jackson as long as all the dates were in public, in a cold place where we wouldn’t want to take our clothes off.”

Mike’s brows furrow as he tilts his head. “Wait, I said that?”

“You said it after you had like, five beers the next day,” Peyton says as she rolls her eyes. “That’s not hypocritical at all.”

Mike sighs. He doesn’t have many options other than to change the subject. “I’m heading to the doctor’s tomorrow.”

She nods as she stares down at her hands. Her tongue feels like lead when she speaks. “Want me to go with you?”

“It’s fine, it’s just a check up appointment,” he says as he rubs his hand over his beard. “It’ll be fine, Peyton.”

“Are you sure?”

Mike nods. “Yeah, you have school.”

“I could get out early. I only have gym and art after lunch. It fits in with your appointment.”

“It’s fine.”

She wants to tell him to quit just right then and there. Part of her thinks it would be easier to watch him face retirement head on than deal with the thought of yet another doctor’s appointment with bad news.

She takes a deep breath. “You don’t have to lie to yourself, you know?”


	4. iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Ginny and Mike finally confront what happened before Mike almost went to the Cubs.

Face of a Franchise  
By Joelle Fransen

With the exception of calling up Ginny Baker, the Padres have spent the last several years speaking in whispers, losing fans in dropping attendance numbers, and wallowing in a small budget. They have no World Series trophy; a playoff drought that is almost nearing a decade; or a farm system pipped with prospects. There was only a fourth straight season of 70-something wins. With all that in mind, there is no reason for Lawson to push his body in the short-term when he must be thinking of the long-term consequences.

But athletes do not think beyond individual days. They try to squeeze every ounce out of their bodies until there isn’t an ounce left. Lawson is 37 and has been dealing with who knows how much pain, but he says he isn’t ready to give up. And it’s more telling that even with Cuban star Livan Duarte, the Padres need Mike Lawson to be the face of the franchise. With Baker’s star dwindling after an 0-3 start to the season, Lawson has stuck with the Padres when they were pulling in attendance numbers barely past 5,000. 

The Padres still need Lawson, the question becomes if he feels like he still needs them.

//

 

“Injuries, aches, and pains are part of the deal. I signed up for this, Peyton."

That’s not what I’m saying, she thinks. She feels like the answer is obvious. That playing through pain is easier than coming to terms with the fact that you don’t have a ring, but the other alternative sticks out farther in her mind. She knows it’s not likely or even logical, but part of her wonders if the real reason he wants to return to baseball so it means less time for him to have to figure out how the hell to be a dad. One more season of a baseball means he’ll only have her at his house for one more year until she ships off to college. 

It’s her anxiety talking, she knows that. Hell, it’s not even logical, because her father is standing right in front of her, offering to make her a quesadilla without a spatula because he’s always worrying about if she’s eating enough. 

It’s really stupid, when she thinks about it, but most decisions don’t make sense when she thinks about it. 

He sighs as he pushes the quesadilla in her direction. She picks it up, but feels the word spill out of her mouth before she takes a bite. 

“I’ll be fine,” he says as takes a seat next to her. 

“What’s fine for you? Needing ten minutes to be able to finally get out of bed in the morning is fine? Not needing double knee replacements until only after you decide to retire on your own terms?”

“Peyton, it’s late. You should sleep.”

“You know you’re kind of the only person I have left, right? I’d prefer to have you in one piece when it’s all said and done.”

“I’ll text you once I come out of the doctor’s, okay?” he offers. He watches her eyes soften. 

She nods as she swallows. 

He doesn’t know if his words will help or make the situation worse, which is really just the summary of his past year, but it seems to bring her some peace. Maybe not peace, but less anxiety. He wonders if those are synonymous with her after the year she’s had.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come to the doctor’s with you? It wouldn’t be a big deal if I missed class. It’s not like I’m trying to get out of class to miss a test or something. You can email my teachers to make sure,” she says as she crosses her arms and hunches over the counter. She looks smaller than normal.

“Never said you were,” he said as he rubs her back. “Things’ll work out.” 

Peyton takes a bite of her quesadilla. All of a sudden, it doesn’t look so appetizing anymore.

“I’m sorry the trade to the Cubs fell through,” she mumbles.

“What do you mean? That’s nowhere near your fault.”

“But I’m the reason you asked for it in the first place,” she says as she pulls the sleeves of her hoodie over her hands like she always does when she’s anxious.

And if the trade had gone through, you would have a ring, a sense of peace, and slightly less fucked up knees, she wants to say, but holds her tongue.

 

//

 

He ignores Rachel’s call after his doctor appointment.

 

//

 

“Lawson?”

A glance at Baker tells him they’re on the eight floor of their building. Thirty-three floors more to go. He can keep it together for more than twenty seconds. He’ll be fine.

“O-oh, hey.”

It’s the first time since the start of Spring Training that she gets a good luck at him. He always looked slightly older than he was, but nearly two decades of Major League Baseball will do that to a person.

“Hey,” she stammers at her catcher when the elevator opens to reveal him. He’s wearing sweats and a t-shirt that looks like it was from his rookie season.

Mike doesn’t crack a joke, he doesn’t even look up at her, he just shoves his hands further into his pockets.

“Mike…” 

“It’s fine,” he says as he shoves his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t know how tense the words sound when they stumble off his tongue.

“Hey…”

He wastes no time in unlocking his door, but Ginny puts a hand on his shoulder. He flinches, wasting no time in bypassing her and walking over to the window overlooking Petco. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“What do you think?” Mike replies with a small laugh at the end. His voice isn't harsh or angry. It's just devastated, and somehow that's the worst of it.

“Okay,” Ginny says with an equally defeated nod as she sits down on the couch overlooking the window.

He never took a good look at Petco from above. The view from their new apartment overlooks Petco. He let Peyton have the bedroom overlooking the stadium. He refused to admit it then, but he didn’t want a reminder of how that part of his life would most likely gone in the coming months.

Mike collects places, places that his mother dragged him to, he has played in a variety of places that never seem the same when he comes back for another away game in another season. They’re only connected by the smell of various stadiums, but they feel the same. He found a certain familiarity in the ritual of boarding passes and baggage claim but the rest of it is new as she navigates unfamiliar roads, he lets himself think about life without baseball. 

Maybe he’s just getting old, but the details seem to blend together.

“I’m telling Oscar tomorrow after I meet with the team doctor,” he finally says. His breath is a little shakier than he wants it to be.

“You’re not gonna see that specialist?”

“I just saw a specialist and he told me my career was basically over. No point in getting a third opinion,” he says with a sigh. 

There will be press conferences and press releases, but those have always been easy. 

“I don’t know how to explain to my kid that I thought being able to play half a fucking season was worth risking not being able to walk without difficulty when I’m older.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mike,” she says. The usage of his first name barely registers in his ears. It’s the first time she has called him that since Broadner’s.

“She…she knows that’s what I’ve been doing. And the worst fucking part is that it just confirms everything that she’s thought about me. That I don’t care about her, that she’s a distraction,” he says as he rubs his hands across his face. 

“She doesn’t think that, Mike,” she says as she sits down next to him on the couch.

“She doesn’t need to think that, Baker. That’s been all but proven to her,” he says as he tries to focus on the television set in front of him. ESPN is showing highlights of the Sharks game last night. He’s never met any of the players on that team, but it’s almost overwhelming about how jealous he feels of the rookies on that team who had a whole career to look forward to.

He’s jealous of Ginny, but he doesn’t know if it’s for that reason.

“Mike, don’t say that,” she says as she places a hand on his thigh. He flinches, but doesn’t move away. 

“I’ll say it because it’s true, Gin. It’s not like I’m one to lie to you.”

Ginny’s eyebrows shoot up. “Lie to me? Then what’s the last few months been for us? You haven’t been lying about your feelings for me? Lying about whatever this is?”

“I…you…you can’t risk your career like this.”

He doesn’t mention that he’s in a relationship with Rachel, he doesn’t mention how bad the optics of dating the first female pitcher in the MLB would look like for him.

“Mike…”

She knows perfectly well that she might not be exactly rational at the moment, that maybe right now she doesn't have a grasp on what's true, what's real, what's the wave of emotion they've been riding for the last year. 

“Ginny, what’re we doing?” Mike growls. 

“I don’t know,” she finally says, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth.

She lets out a sigh. She shouldn't have started this, not here and not now. And maybe it really is none of her business. Maybe she really does have no claim over the part of his life that doesn't revolve around the ballpark. But then again, maybe, she's done feeling that sick dread every time her phone beeps and tired of lying awake at night wondering if he's okay. “I'm just worried about you.”

Mike sighs. “You don’t have to be.”

“There isn’t anything to talk about, Baker. This wasn’t ever going to work out,” he says as he crosses his arms.

“Ginny, whatever we are, whatever the hell this is…please just stay away from my kid and I. I can’t fuck this up.”

Since Broadner’s, their situation was always a ticking time bomb. He couldn’t stay her teammate without ruining it all. He had a habit of doing that: fucking things up. 

Ginny frowns. “Stay away from your kid? You realize Peyton has been the one texting me, right?”

“Dad?” He hears Peyton plop her backpack down in the hallway. 

Ginny watches as Mike curses under his breath. 

“Oh…hey, Ginny,” Peyton says as she wanders into the room. “What are you guys…?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger!


	5. v

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hey, can I ask you something?”
> 
> Fuck, here it comes. His mind swirls with how he can spin this. Out of all the parenting articles he read, there wasn’t one on how to tell your teenage daughter that he almost kissed her favorite athlete outside a bar before he was about to get traded. Articles on how to tell your daughter you’re getting a divorce, you’re getting married? Why don’t they have one for telling your daughter you have feelings for your star pitcher?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all your comments and kudos!
> 
> This new chapter leaves off exactly where the last chapter left off.

> “You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of a man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.” -- **Roger Kahn**

“How was school?” He asks as he shoves his hands in his pockets.

Peyton shrugs. “Fine. Got you tacos.”

“T-thanks,” Mike says as he picks at a blister on his hand.

“I got you four and then Jackson ate the other three since he skipped lunch…” she says, trailing off.

God, I sound like an idiot, she thinks. Her dad probably got told his knee barely has any cartilage left and she’s saying a single fucking taco is an appropriate consolation prize.

“You okay?” She asks as she pads over to the couch. She gave up asking “how’d it go?” weeks ago.

He nods. “Fine.”

He can’t tell her right now. He can’t.

“How much of that did you hear?” He asks.

“Hear what?” She asks as she coils her earbuds around her phone. God bless teenagers, he thinks. She had her headphones in, there’s no way she would have heard.

“Just…just what Ginny and I were talking about.”

“Not much,” she says with a shrug. “Why?”

“Livan might be traded,” he lies.

“Why? Because of the Silicon Valley dude? You guys have no catching depth.”

Mike shrugs. “They can get a good haul for him from the Yankees.”

Peyton picks out a shrimp from her taco. “That’s who is in on him?”

Mike shrugs. Why not? It’s his own fake trade rumour.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Fuck, here it comes. His mind swirls with how he can spin this. Out of all the parenting articles he read, there wasn’t one on how to tell your teenage daughter that he almost kissed her favorite athlete outside a bar before he was about to get traded. Articles on how to tell your daughter you’re getting a divorce, you’re getting married? Why don’t they have one for telling your daughter you have feelings for your star pitcher?

“Could I get on birth control?”

Holy fuck.

“Wait, what?”

Peyton stands up from her chair. “Look, just hear me out. Don’t freak out.”

Mike frowns. “I’m not freaking out.”

“You turned white as a sheet just now.”

“My teenage daughter just asked me for birth control.”

“The pharmacist said I’d need your consent to get it,” she replies as she crosses her arms. “I mean, would you rather have me tell you I’m pregnant?”

Mike sighs as he considers putting vodka in his coffee. “Fine. I’ll get it for you.”

 

//

 

“Do you think Peyton knows?”

Ginny groans. “Probably.”

“Mike knows how to pull words out of his ass…”

“Great choice of phrasing, Ev.”

Evelyn rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying maybe he figured out a way to explain what she did hear? She might not know the real story.”

“What even is the real story?”

“That’s for you to tell, not me.”

“This would never work. I was stupid to even think to kiss him in the first place.”

She rubs a hand across her face when she sees her phone light up.

mami?

Who is this?

es Livan

Did you get a new number?

no se. this isn my phone.

where even are you?

No se. somewhere.

“Livan,” Ginny says through gritted teeth. She looks over at Evelyn.

“Can you track a number to find its location?” Ginny asks. She figures it’s worth a shot asking even if it is a question for Eliot.

“If the phone has its geographical location not blocked,” she says as he takes the phone out of her hands.

“How do you…?”

“You don’t think I’ve done this to Blip’s phone before?”

 

//

 

“I don’t have time for this, Livan,” she says as she sneaks past the bouncer.

“Thanks,” she motions over to the bartender. She drops two bills on the table. Hopefullly it’s enough to keep this quiet.

“Come on,” Ginny says as she turns Livan around on the barstool. He sits up, but slumps against her.

“Never picked you to be a cuddly drunk,” Ginny says as she tries to heave him up. “Both of us will bust our ass if you don’t start walking, Duarte.”

“Adios,” Livan says as he waves to the bartender.

“Hey, man…your tab.”

Ginny rolls her eyes as she hands the bartender a fifty. “I got it.”

“Gracias!”

 

//


	6. vi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is Ginny gay?”
> 
> He almost chokes on his beer. “Peyton, just because she plays ball and is a girl doesn’t mean she’s gay.”
> 
> “Well, I didn’t say that…” 
> 
> Mike snorts. “Just trust me on this, kid.”
> 
> He can see how much it deflates her so he backs off. “Why do you ask?”
> 
> Peyton shrugs. “I saw her with some brunette girl in the hallway. They seemed really...close. Could have just been wine drunk, though.”

> "Do you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?"

“Have you talked to Ginny yet?” Peyton asks as she scrolls through her phone. She doesn’t even look up at Mike as she types out a text.

“Oscar’s handling it,” Mike says as he searches for his car keys in the bowl sitting on the kitchen island.

“I’m getting a ride to school, Dad. You don’t have to drive me,” Peyton says as she hops off her stool and grabs an old piece of pizza from the fridge.

“Are you sure? It’s not a problem,” he says as he rubs a hand over his beard.

“I’m fine,” Peyton says with a shrug. “Jackson’s driving me.”

“Do you want me to make you a salad?” Rachel asks as she peers over her laptop from where she’s seated at the dining room table.

“No thanks,” Peyton says as she hoists her backpack over her shoulder and props their front door open with her hip. “Jackson’s downstairs so I should probably get going”

Rachel shoots Mike a look as Peyton shuts the door.

“Do you really let her eat like that normally?” Rachel asks.

Mike doesn’t even look up from where he’s slicing an avocado. “Do you think I send my kid to school with Gatorade and a bag of chips? Her diet is fine, Rach.”

Rachel crosses her arms. “You let her drink coffee, Mike.”

“Rachel, you drink more coffee than I do and you’re half my size. Peyton’s fine.”

With a yawn, he staggers for the living room, the chill of the floor beneath his bare feet making him shiver even with the sweltering heat outside.

Loneliness had followed him his entire life. It was nothing new. They were on pretty good terms, actually. Once Mike woke up, the ache faded to something dull, manageable, an ever present background hum he could drown out with work, friends, or sex. Well, the sex part was less than usual with Rachel nowadays.

“Since when are you in a relationship with Sanders by the way?” Rachel asks with a sly smile.

“Hm?” Mike asks as puts a hand against his lower back. His back pops, but at this point he’s used to it.

“I read the article by Rosenthal, Mike. Those anonymous quotes are from you,” Rachel says as she crosses her arms.

Mike feels his heart jump into his throat. “Ro…Rosenthal said he wouldn’t use my name.”

“He didn’t, but I know you,” Rachel says as she takes out her phone and reads off the article. “A veteran player, who spoke to me under the condition of anonymity, said “no one would question this if she was a guy. Livan being out at night? Maybe. But if they’re fucking each other that doesn’t become a topic. Who knows if two male teammates who are in the same position aren’t having sex with each other?”

“What was I supposed to say, Rachel? I’m not allowed to defend my rookie?” Mike snaps, a little too quickly and with a little reserve. He doesn’t know if she’s noticed how his glance lingered at Ginny for a little longer than what could be passed off as just teammates.

Rachel frowns. “Let her agent and PR handle it.”

“Wait, you don’t have a segment about this already written?” Mike scoffs. “You asked her to come on your show and comment on a case that has nothing to do with her when she had barely been here for a fucking week. This isn’t up your alley?”

“I have to head out,” she snaps, but with the same cold smile that he’s seen too much toward the end of their marriage.

 

//

 

@sandersblips: It was Evers who gave thought quote.  
@sansaworldseries Sanders probably put that quote out himself…  
@pitypartyatpetco Probably Voorhies.  
@eadorks Why are we assuming an MLB player has the personality to say something like that even under annoymoity?

 

//

 

“Beer?”

“Sure,” Mike says with a sigh and a shrug. He wanted something stronger, but it’s barely noon. “How’d you know?”

“You’re wearing a flannel and boots and you don’t live in San Francisco. You look like a beer kind of guy,” the brunette bartender says as she slides the glass over to him. “Rough day?”

“Could be a hell of a lot better,” Mike grumbles. His eyes drift over to ESPN where his rookie and replacement were on the screen.

“Would you want a menu?” The bartender asks.

“Oh, um, sure,” he says as he snaps his attention away from the screen.

“First time the Padres are on national news it’s because of this?” The bartender says as she cocks her toward the TV.

“It’s not true,” Mike grumbles.

“What? Do you work for the team?” The bartender laughs.

Mike shrugs. Barely.

“Not exactly,” he says as he thumbs over the menu. “But I know she’s better than that.” He shouldn’t have brought it up, but the words come out of like vomit.

“What’s your name?” He asks in order to break the awkward pause.

“Cara,” the bartender says. Part of her looks like she wants to brace for the inevitable flirting, but the other half seems shocked he had the decency to ask for her name.

“Michael,” he says. He’s learned enough by now that using his full name throws casual fans off enough that he doesn’t get recognized.

He’s flipping through his email when Blip’s number pops up on the screen. He mulls over answering it, but rejects the call.

“Do you work around here?” The bartender—Cara, he’s pretty sure, he’s honestly too tired to remember—asks.

“In between jobs right now,” Mike replies. It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not a lie either.

Mike isn't stupid. Impulsive, arrogant, and prideful to a fault, sure—he'll admit to those any day—but he can see the reality of the situation. His knees are shot and he knows it and feels it more and more everyday. Even if he did make it back, he's not going to start.

“Have you worked here long?” Mike asks her. The conversation is enough to distract him from the news reports swarming TMZ about Ginny.

“I bounce around,” she says with a shrug and a smile. “Started here about three months ago?”

Mike smiles at the way she says three months ago like nothing’s constant for her. After years in San Diego and seven years into his 30s, he forgot what it’s like to shuffle around.

 

//

 

The cool air from after the rain welcomes itself in the living room as Mike opens the patio door. He wanders over to the couch as he stretches out on the couch. He reaches for the black plush blanket that has been strewn across the end of the couch. Petco’s lights are the only thing that illuminates the apartment in addition to the TV and the soft shine of his phone.

He’s about to drift to sleep when he hears a knock on the door. Peyton should be coming back from the movie with her friends soon.

“Hey,” Peyton says as he opens the door. “Brought stir fry.”

“I thought I mentioned we were going to dinner with Rachel for dinner?” Mike asks.

“She’s at the Lakers game to cover it for the playoffs,” Peyton says with a shrug. “She didn’t text you?”

“Guess a coworker must have called off,” he says, but his voice tells a different story.

“Are you two okay right now?” Peyton asks as she opens her takeout box and sticks her chopsticks right in.

“We’re fine,” he says as Peyton shoves the rest of the empty containers in the trash.

“By the way, I invited Jackson over for dinner tonight since his dad is working late.”

“Okay,” Mike says as he steals one of the dumplings. Peyton begins to open her mouth like she’s expecting to have to fight, but Mike doesn’t fight it. A part of him wishes that Peyton told him earlier, but he also doesn’t want the kid eating a microwaved dinner alone. God knows he did too much of that as a kid.

“Hey, can I ask a question?”

“Shoot,” he says as he grabs a beer from the fridge.

“Is Ginny gay?”

He almost chokes on his beer. “Peyton, just because she plays ball and is a girl doesn’t mean she’s gay.”

“Well, I didn’t say that…”

Mike snorts. “Just trust me on this, kid.”

He can see how much it deflates her so he backs off. “Why do you ask?”

Peyton shrugs. “I saw her with some brunette girl in the hallway. They seemed really...close. Could have just been wine drunk, though.”

He’s never been more happy to hear his daughter’s idiot boyfriend knock on the door.

“I’ll get it,” he says as he begins making his way to the door. He’d give just about anything to stop the current conversation.

“Hey, Mike.”

Strike one.

His eyebrows shoot up. “Did you just call me Mike?”

“Mr. Lawson,” Jackson stammers out as he slips off his shoes in the hallway.

“Better,” Mike says through gritted teeth as the teenager steps inside.

Whether it’s to annoy him or if Jackson was just too lazy to care, Jackson leaves his sandals outside the door. His week has dissolved into shit quickly enough that he’s lost the energy to argue so with a grunt, Mike bends down to pick them up.

“It’s not like I’ve never gone to Victoria’s Secret, Cara...” He hears Ginny say as he snags the sandals up from the floor. He doesn’t know who it’s directed to, but he knows that he’s the only person in this hallway. Ignoring the pain in his back, he ducks back until his apartment, but not before he glances at the brunette coming out of Ginny’s apartment.

Aw, fuck.

When Mike recognizes the brunette bartender from his lunch earlier today, he doesn’t know what to do other than to laugh or wonder why his life is like this.

“Everything okay, Dad?”

He nods in his daughter’s direction as he shuts the door. His composure is cracked only enough for his cheeks to go pink, but that could easily be blamed on the humidity.


	7. 7

> “A ballplayer spends a good piece of his life gripping a baseball, and in the end, it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” -- **Jim Bouton**

Her most prominent memory from high school--the one that sticks out like a thorn--is not of her state championship, not of her first day of high school, or not of her childhood home. It’s the smell of the hospital waiting room she sat in for two hours after the accident until her mother was able to drive up to the town where her high school team was playing. 

Ginny never did the hospital visits. The Padres usually had Blip or Salvi go--maybe Mike would tag along--but they never once asked her. The hospital staff knew enough about The Accident--which easily would have been the most interesting thing about her narrative if not for the fact that she had a vagina--to not to press the Padres as to why she hasn’t made the rounds with her teammates.

She knows it’s for the kids, which is the only reason she volunteers to go, but it doesn’t keep her from making her body feel like it’s pulsing with anxiety. What’s worse is that she knows how this looks. That Ginny Baker was too busy promoting her image with Nike to pay a stop to the hospital. The media will conveniently forget the fact that she saw her father die in front of her because her turning up for an event like this a week after she was seen leaving a bar with her Cuban catcher can only boil down to nothing more than a PR stunt.

Blip’s playing Yugioh with a 5th grader when she makes her way down the hall.

“Who’s your favorite princess?” She hears the little girl ask her captain. He’s got his knee brace--newly painted with stickers--outstrechted on the bed as the kid paints his nails.

He chews on the bottom of his lip before answering. “Cinderella, I guess.”

“But she’s boring. She doesn’t even do anything,” the little girl whines as Mike laughs.

“Who’s yours then?”

“Mulan. She’s got a sword and fights people.”

“Do you think my teammate over there would beat her in a fight?” Ginny asks as she leans against the doorframe.

Mike watches as the little girl drops her nail brush on the blindingly white bedsheet. “Ginny Baker?”

“Told you she’d stop by in a bit,” Mike says through a grin. If there’s one thing Ginny has learned about Mike in the last year is that he knows how to put on a smile for the cameras.

Ginny bites down on her lip before painting on a smile. “What’s your name?”

“Kaya,” the kid mumbles as she fiddles with her blanket.  

“I told Baker about you seeing you the last time I stopped by. She was excited to stop by, say hi. Right, Baker?” He asks.

Ginny nods with a smile in the way that she’s been trained.

“Hi, Kaya. How old are you?”

“I’m five,” she whispers, a little more confidently this time.

“How long have you been a Padres fan?”

“For six years.”

Mike snorts. “You’re really dedicated then.”

  


//

  


She can’t figure out if she’s being punished or laughed at by God, but by some higher power, she’s driven back to Petco in a town car with Mike. They let the driver talk to Mike about the Chargers, but her gaze is trained on her phone the entire time.“Are you doing anything for Mother’s Day, Ms. Baker?”

She doesn’t even realize what the question was until she saw Mike’s jaw tense.

“Her mom’s on the East Coast, Rob. We’re actually back at the hospital that day” Mike answers for her.

The driver takes that as his cue to end the conversation.

“Thanks,” she mumbles to him once they arrive at Petco.

“It’s not a problem,” he says with a tense shrug. “I get it.”

She bites down on her lip. As a high schooler, she read every article she could find about Mike, but not one of them mentioned his parents.

Hell, Ginny forgot Mike had a mom. He’s the kind of person that seems like he was born an adult. Like he’d never been a ten-year-old little league player or an awkward teenager. He seems like the kind of person that’s just born with too much confidence matched with a hardened shell on his back.

“You spoke to Al yet?” She asks. It’s not an easier topic, but anything is better than the one they were on.

Mike shrugs like it’s nothing. “Need to talk to Oscar first.”

She feels her “What does that mean? So you’re really done?”

“We all knew that when I went down, Baker,” he says before letting out a pained sigh. He’s thought about what he was going to say to the team for months, but words are falling short for him. “Apparently everyone but you.”

“Then why did you try to come back?” She asks even though she knows the answer.

“It’s the same thing you would have done--hell, anyone of the guys in this clubhouse would have, Ginny.”

She gets it. In a way.

“Are you okay, Mike?” She asks, but not without caution. The way she says his name feels like she’s stepping on glass. Like she’s asking for permission to say it.

“What is it to you? We made it clear that we shouldn’t keep...keep doing whatever this is, Ginny.”  
  
  
“I’m not...this isn’t what that was back at Broadner’s. I just...just I need to know that you’re okay,” she starts as he starts walking toward the clubhouse entrance.

“Keep your voice down. You’re already in enough shit as it is,” he snaps.

“Mike. I’m just trying to help,” she snaps back.

“You’re twenty-fucking-three years old, Baker. You have your entire career in front of you,” he says, voice a little more strained than he intends.

“I know that I haven’t been in the show for more than a year, but I do know that ever since I was kid, baseball had been my life.”

She watches as Mike’s grip on the clubhouse entrance loosens.

“Baseball had always come first for me, you know? It had been my family, really. But at the same time, the first time I really loved baseball? Well...at least loved it without fear...was when I blew out my ankle in junior high. I had rehab and everything, but a part of me like being injured? Because I could escape the pressure.”

She doesn’t know why she says it. A part of her knows the real reason is that it’s out of jealousy, but the other part of her wants to think he’ll get it.

“Look, I-I gotta meet with Oscar,” Mike musters out. “I’ll see you around.”

  


//

  


“Mike,” Oscar says as he stands up. Mike didn’t pick fights with people, but he always felt uneasy by how put together Oscar looked every time they met for lunch. The meetings were never a good sign--no one ever wanted to be called to the principal’s office--yet he was in control in this situation. He was bringing the bad news to Oscar, not the other way around.

“I take it you made friends at the hospital?” Oscar asks, glancing down at his player’s hot pink nails and Mulan sticker on his knee brace.

“What? You’re hoping that the media getting a photo of me with my nails painted that it’ll create a distraction?”

“I wasn’t asking that,” Oscar replies as he sips his coffee. “Necessarily.”

“I don’t think that’s the kind of press that the MLB wants...coffee, please?” Mike asks the waiter as he pours them water.

“How’s Peyton?” Oscar asks once the waiter scuffles back to the bar that’s serving too many mimosas for noon on a Tuesday.

Mike wants to ask how’s your team, but figures his future job prospects aren’t bright enough to take a hit like that.

“Fine,” he says as he sits down. “How’s Daniella?”

“Fine,” he says, diverting the subject just as quickly as he started it. “Look, Mike. I’ll just cut to the chase. Al said you had thoughts of retiring.”

"I’ve gone to three specialty doctors. You knew that was always on the table, Oscar,” he says as the waiter drops off their coffee. He feels like he’s going to need something stronger than coffee to get through this conversation.   
  
  
“I was playing with borrowed time as it is. A fresh start might be what we need," Mike starts, but with less conviction than he wanted to have.

He watches as Oscar blinks. "You said 'we'. Did you tell me because you want me to talk you out of it?"

Five minutes ago, Mike would have said no.

"I don't know. Maybe."

Oscar leans back. "Mike, you should do what's best for you. I wouldn’t tell any player any different. But this clubhouse won't be the same without you, and you should know that too."

"Oscar," Mike started, but only to realise that he didn't know what came next. The hurt he expected didn't come. Instead, a sense of numbness took its place. He had spent years trying to repress his emotions, trying to learn how to not crack under pressure and this was nothing new.

“I’ll stay on the DL. I’ll do what you need me to do to cut down the bottom line, but I’m done. I was playing on borrowed time as it is.”

//  
  


“Your mom called,” Eliot says. “Is she coming out for Mother’s…I’ll take that look as a no.”

“She didn’t call last year, let alone visit,” she mumbles as she slings her backpack over her shoulder. “Why do the MLB insist on using me for their Mother’s Day promotion?”

“Because you’re a girl and their one way of marketing to women is through pink jerseys and shoes,” Eliot says through a gulp of coffee.

“At least we have an off day on Mother’s Day so the worst will be over by then,” she says as they climb into the towncar.

“Straight home, Ms. Baker?” The driver asks.

The words take a minute to register because they’re at home. They’re at Petco.

For years, he thought he had discovered the magical algorithm for getting through life without any help from anybody. He’d always seem to find a way for it to work out, more than the year when he lived in motels more than he had friends at school, even when it finally hit him that his mom stole from him, when Rachel left...

“You going to be okay to go to school Monday with Mother’s Day?” He starts, but cuts himself off.

Peyton, who’s made herself comfortable on the couch with her homework, looks up   
“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Peyton…” he starts, but stops, knowing full well that she’s deflecting and that his daughter took after him more than he thought. “Just...tell me if you’re not feeling up for school Monday and I’ll let you stay home.”

He wishes his kid didn’t have to be as strong as she was.

  


//

  


He gets the text at a quarter past two.

**I know things have been shit between us and i know that but i need you to come over. Please.**

**You ok?**

He waits for her reply as he   
takes the opportunity to move out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

**anxiety.**

**Watch your breathing. ill be over.**

He stands in front of the door for a few moments (seconds? minutes? hours?) while his mind plays tricks on him. When he blinks, for a moment he swears they’re back at Petco. The sun blinds his eyes from the corners, fans cheer, but when he blinks again it’s gone, replaced by the hallway’s recycled air.

He eyes the doorknob, fist closed and resting against it.

He honestly has no idea if he's knocked when Ginny opens the door. He tries to remember if he did, tries to remember anything, but all he can feel is his blood pumping through his veins.

“Mike…” she says through a shaky breath. His eyes focus on his rookie standing in the door frame, silhouetted against the hall light, a loose, grey tank top and Nike shorts hugging her body. He watches as he sees her hands start to reach for him, but then stops. She's not sure he wants to be touched right now anyway, not sure what he really wants.

So Mike does what he’s always known how to do--talk.

“Hey, you’re okay, Ginny. You’re okay.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t apologize for this,” he says as she lets him in. She looks more terrified than she did in her debut, which scares him shitless.

For a minute, he forgets where he is and who’s with him, so he presses her face into his chest the way he did with Rachel when she hugs him. Mike’s shaking hands remind him that it’s his teammate, not his wife, that’s with him now, so he pulls away and rubs a hand up on down her shoulder.

“Do you start tomorrow?” He asks, instantly regretting it. That should be the least of her concerns.

“I..I can’t.”

“We’ll call Al. Tell him you’re sick.”

“Mike, I can’t…”

Mike’s left without words. He looks at his pitcher, tears silently streaming down her face.

“Baker, you wouldn’t be the first person to call in for this,” he musters out.

“My ERA’s 5.12 right now…”

“So is fucking Sonny’s. You can afford to sit this one out,” he says as he rubs his hand up and down her arm. He’s seen her look like this before. When life sucks her dry. But not like this.

“I just…”

“Just try to breathe normally, okay?”

The panic goes away in what feels like fucking hours, but his phone tells him it’s only been twelve minutes. He grabs a blanket that’s sprawled across the living room chair that looks like it belongs in a showroom than a home.

“You cold?”

“How’d you know what to do?” She mumbles as she accepts the blanket.

“Peyton’s had this happen a few times,” he says through a grunt as he lowers himself back down on the floor. He doesn’t want to say that it’s happened to him a few times, too. “Maybe more than a few times. It’s happened mostly at night so I think she’s hidden a few of them.”

He watches as his pitcher nods.

“Baker...” he starts, using her last name like a shield against the fact that they’re still teammates--Mike’s fucked up knee or not--yet their thighs are a mere inches apart.

“I’m sorry I made you come down here,” she mumbles.

“It’s fine.”

They sit like that for another few minutes, Mike looking out through her window at the pier’s lights glistening in the dark as she rests her head on his shoulder.

“You know how you said the first time you really enjoyed baseball was when you got injured? I started playing baseball because it was a way for me to make friends when my mom and I shipped out from town to town,” he starts before letting out a heavy sigh. “But as I got older, my mom started working as a bartender so her Saturdays were Monday nights. I had to deal with the aftermath of her benders so I’d take care of her mess and then go to practice the next Tuesday morning.”

“You felt like you could control it,” Ginny mumbles into his shoulder.

Mike raises his eyebrows as he gives her a tired, small nod. “Yeah, I guess.”

He wonders if he really likes playing baseball. Or if it’s just been a part of him for so long he doesn’t know what to do without it.

“I’ll stay here if you need me to,” he says as he leans forward a bit. It’s the first time he’s gotten a good look at her in months beyond their quick, awkward glances in the hallway.

“You should get back,” she says as she leans back against her couch. On the mound, she was usually stone-faced and her pitches had few tells. Now, though, she looked like she was bone-tired.

“You sure, Baker?”

She nods slowly.

“Aw, fuck,” he says as he fishes in the pockets of his sweatpants. He says a silent prayer as he checks again, but his keys are nowhere to be found.

“You forgot your keys, didn’t you?” Ginny asks as she raises her eyebrows.

Mike sits up a bit. Ginny grimaces as his back creaks.

“Looks like I’m the mess tonight.”

“I’m sorry you had to come over here,” she says as she stands up, albeit a little more shakily than she initially intended it to be. “Is Rachel…?”

“She’s in LA,” he replies without thinking. He’s slightly taken aback by the question, but then he realizes that she was more concerned about what it would look like if Rachel woke up with him missing from their bed, not their relationship status.

“You can stay here if you want,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.

“I’ll take the couch,” he says without hesitation. It’s not his best idea to stay, but he can’t call Peyton since the last thing he wants to do is wake up his daughter at this hour in the morning.

“Your back…”

“I’m practically retired, Baker. My back is always gonna be fucked,” he says. She can’t help but notice the use of her last name. This is still a business relationship, nothing more, nothing less.

“Are you sure?” She asks.

  


//

  


“How’d you lock yourself out?” Peyton asks the minute she opens the door. The tension in shoulders ease up when Mike realizes she’s still got smudged eyeliner on so Mike figures she most likely just woke up.

“Forgot my keys taking out the trash,” he says as he rubs the back of his neck. That couch was not kind to him. “Do you want a ride to school or is Jackson…?”

“Jackson’s driving me.”

“Of course he is,” Mike says under his breath as he makes his way over to the kitchen to fish out some oatmeal.

“Did you eat yet?” He asks.

“A little.”

“Coffee’s not food.”

Peyton blinks. “Then no.”

Mike tries not to sigh. Al told him half of parenting was just trying to keep his daughter semi-functional throughout the day, but still.

“Are you sure you’re okay with going to school today?” He asks. His daughter’s a teenager so he’s more concerned if she doesn’t take the out he’s giving her.

He watches as Peyton nods while scratching at her jawline. “I’m fine, Dad.”

He rubs his hands over his face before sluggishly pulling a coffee mug out of the cupboards.

He watches Peyton flip through her phone as she sips her coffee.

“Hey, Dad?”

“Did you ever think about having kids? With Rachel?”

Mike nearly chokes on his oatmeal, but he recovers enough to muster out. “Why? D’you hear something on Twitter?”

“No, I was just wondering,” she says with a shrug.

“Um,” he starts. “Not that much. In the beginning, maybe. She didn’t want to take maternity leave so it was never really the right time for us so we never got around to it,” he says, regretting each word as it comes out of his mouth. Leave it to him to make fatherhood sound casual.  
  
  
  
“But did you want kids?”

He feels like his grip is going to break the handle of the coffee mug. Regardless of how many on the mounds speeches he’s made in high pressure situations, he doesn’t know how to tell your newly acquired kid that you couldn’t imagine having one. “We were both young when we got married. Neither of us were that established so I didn’t want kids at the time, but thought maybe later on...do you want fruit?”

The teenager blinks at him like she’s still balancing it on the scale of painfully true or complete bullshit.

“Why do you ask?” He asks as he hands her a bowl of grapes.

“I was just curious, that’s all,” she replies as she goes back to looking at her phone. Mike knows that she could have probably gotten this information from Al when she plays poker with him on off-days, but she chose to ask him.

“Rachel didn’t…”

“What? Say anything to me about her possibly being pregnant? No, I was just asking to ask.”

It’s been over a year since Peyton’s mother died--four holidays have passed and one birthday--but he knows that it never hits you all at once. He wants to tell her it’ll be okay, but he knows by now that those words aren’t worth anything in this scenario.

“You should get your stuff packed for school. Jackson will be here soon.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

> **“I had discovered after the game that loyalty, at least in sporting terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with.” --Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch**

With sixteen years in The Show, Mike feels like he’s perfected the art of lying by now. So much so that she doesn’t always know when he’s telling the truth.

“Your night free tonight?” Blip asks as he stares back at Mike in the doorframe. His hands are shoved in his pockets, but his face is stoic.

“How’d you get in?” Mike asks. Letting Blip into his home has always felt easy even if it’s been Blip opening his home to Mike. Whether it’s letting Mike crash after a mauling by the Dodgers or after Mike walked in on his wife cheating on him with a pediatric surgeon--there’s been a comfort to it up until the end of the season.

“Evelyn knows your doorman from visiting Ginny,” he says with a shrug. “Said I was going to visit Ginny so he just let me go up.”

Mike thinks ahead. He’s always had a tendency to sprint into seemingly trivial decisions, but he focuses on the future more than what’s probably healthy. Every season, obsessing over how they can get ahead in Spring Training, plotting how to make playoffs, sketching a plan to bring his team to October for once.

“Beer?” He asks his outfielder. His shoulders feel too tight for him to be talking to someone he considered his closest friend.

Blip shrugs as he accepts the beer. “How have you been holding up?”

“Oscar already tell you that I’m done?”

Blip sits forward as he raises his eyebrows. “No, but Ginny did.”

Of course, Mike thinks. He doesn’t respond other than nod.

“You have to step in, Mike,” Blip continues as he sits down.

“That’s ironic coming from you,” he says as he takes a sip of his water. They hadn’t spoken to each other since Mike’s knee blew out. He had heard from Sonny that Evelyn and him were going through a rough patch. He didn’t press for details, but a part of him that he hated felt like it was a long time coming.

“Things didn’t end the way you wanted them,” Blip continues. “You signed in San Diego when you didn’t have to. You could’ve gone to the Dodgers or the Giants or the Mariners, but you chose to stay here.”

Probably at the expense of my marriage, Mike wants to say, but holds his tongue given the amount of nights Blip’s spent on his living room couch in the offseason.

“I shouldn’t have said your head wasn’t in it. You’ve been a better soldier than most of the guys on the team,” Blip says as he leans back against the barstool.

“You were right for saying everything you did. I-I shouldn’t have left with things undone like that.”

“I get that you wanted Peyton to be back at her old school. Hell, I would’ve done the same with my boys,” he says before peering down at the label on his beer can.

Mike takes another swig of his beer. He doesn’t want to lie, but he knows that it’s a matter of time before Blip realizes that Peyton being from Chicago wasn’t the only reason he asked for the trade.

Mike clears his throat as he stands up. “Look, sorry to cut this short, but Peyton’s at a friend’s studying and I need to pick her up soon.”

Blip nods as he flicks his phone on. He knows Mike isn’t one to turn down a drink, but this isn’t 2015 anymore.

“It’s fine, man,” he says with a nod. “See you at the gala tomorrow night?”

Mike runs a hand through his beard before giving Blip a nod.

 

//

 

“They win today?”

“Nah, they lost 6 to 1. I just always buy them pizza,” Jackson says with a shrug.

“Who’s that?” A blonde, chubby cheeked boy--who can’t be more than eight--asks Jackson.

“Clayton, go over and put your skate guard are. Can’t have them laying around like that,” he says. The kid wastes no time in putting his skate guards away and scuffles back over to his teammates.

“How long have you been coaching?” Peyton asks as she feels goosebumps appear across her arms. She should have brought a jacket. What the hell has San Diego done to her if she can’t stand in an ice rink for more than five minutes?

“Since I got injured,” Jackson says as he pushes the kid’s helmets into a pile with his skate. Peyton can see that one of his skate laces is fully untied, but it doesn’t seem to be giving him any problems.

“Do you think my dad would do something like this?”

“I guess? He knows how to get people’s attention. He’d probably accidentally curse at a kid,” Jackson says as he tosses her a puck that she promptly throws back at him.

“I’m feeling churros...you know a place we can we get that around here?” Peyton asks as she puts her feet up on the lower rung of the bench. She steals a glance at the cars parked in the rink’s lot. Yeah, no one would know where to get authentic Mexican food around here. Maybe not for another 10 miles.

“Hey, can we wait a bit before we hit the road? I wanted to talk to you about something,” he says as he climbs over the boards.

“About…?”

“Look,” he says as he bends down to unlace his skates. “My buddy lives near Adam Carwell--”

Peyton breathes out as the knot in her stomach loosens. “Carwell? The Kings’ center?”

“Yeah,” he says as he plops down on the bench. “Look, my buddy’s his next door neighbor and he texted me last night that he saw Carwell with Rachel.”

Peyton bites down on her lip. “She covers the Kings sometimes.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says as he sits down next to her. “My buddy said they were kissing.”

“Do you have proof?”

“He didn’t get the chance to take a photo, but he’s never even met you or your dad. Why would he lie about this? Why the hell would I lie about this?”

“I’m just...” she says as she sits down on the bench.

“Hey,” he starts as he sits down next to her. “I’d hold off on telling your dad about this.”

“Why not? Wait until someone breaks the news on Twitter? There could have been other people who saw them together.”

“This is just going to get worse if you confront Rachel the second you get home,” he says as he rubs circles on her palm.

“Jackson…”

“Peyton, I was in your dad’s shoes a year ago when I blew out my ankle. An injury like that is something that takes time to get over,” he says as he cranes his neck to look over at the opening door. “And this isn’t going to help him.”

“Can you just get us home please?” Peyton asks as she picks up her phone from the bench next to her.

 

//

 

“Somehow the Mets had a dildo in one of their lockers yet you’re still trending on Twitter,” Evelyn says as she shuts her laptop.

“Great,” Ginny mumbles as the bartender does a doubletake at his boss when he picks up on that last sentence. She hasn’t been in a restaurant in such a long time that the emptiness of the place before opening feels more welcoming than anything has in a long time.

“The San Diego media isn’t the same as the New York media. It’ll blow over soon enough,” she says as she pulls out her phone. “Any run ins with Mike?”

Ginny watches as a droplet falls down the side of her glass before taking a deep breath. They had agreed to not talk about what happened at Broadner’s, but that gag order seemed to be something Evelyn felt like she could revoke at the drop of a dime. “I saw him yesterday, but that was just a coincidence.”

Evelyn raises her eyebrows. “I wasn’t gonna say it wasn’t.”

“What happened happened, Ev. You think I’d risk that now after what’s happened?”

As she watches the busboy stock glasses, she sees Evelyn flinch out of the corner of her eye.

“G-Ginny...have you seen this?”


End file.
